Rebellions of 1837–38

The rebellions of 1837 were two armed uprisings that took place in Upper and Lower Canada.

In the decades preceding the union of Upper and Lower Canada, the primarily francophone and liberal Patriote party and the administration of Lower Canada opposed one another in a struggle to secure the loyalty of the population. The first episodes of violence took place in the fall of 1837 and culminated in pitched battles between Patriotes and the British Army. A year later rebels launched a second, equally unsuccessful, insurrection.

In Upper Canada, talk of rebellion began in 1837. A meeting of Reformers took place at John Doel’s brewery on 31 July 1837, where journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie proposed a coup d’état. On the morning of 4 December, some 300 men began to march down Yonge Street towards the city of York (Toronto). Armed by the government and reinforced by large numbers arriving from loyal areas outside the city, over 1,000 men marched north to Montgomery’s Tavern, where they routed the rebels.